Music to soothe the soul of a faux criminal defendant

While I was waiting around to witness for a colleague of the law, I compiled a short list of songs that I rate highly for various reasons. I may have generally bad taste in music, but you have to give me credit for the range presented below.

David Bowie – Sound and Vision

Could something this upbeat and pop-y possibly be about crippling malaise and sensory deprivation? Sounds like my average day in law school. How about “Brown brown, leather bound, that’s the color of my doom” instead of the main refrain “Blue blue, electric blue, that’s the color of my room”?

Bon Iver – Skinny Love

Sometimes you have to get your full on emo/hipster/falsetto pants on. I’d like to see what an emo/hipster lawyer would dress like. Florsheim Chucks and skinny trousers probably. Many of us already have the proper emo attitude. But MAN! Look at these hipsters get into this music circle of heartbreak!

…hey guys, remember getting into stuff? Those were good times.

Nas – N.Y. State of Mind (obviously NSFW)

And how about some Nas for good measure? I mean, this song is basically one long criminal confession and is perfect if you’re enrolled in criminal practice courses. So many potential clients may indeed have been handed nines with the intent to defeat foes. It’s probably pretty hard to squeeze in “18 USC Sec. 922″ into a rap.

I’d give my left arm to go to a Daft Punk concert. I like techno. There, I admitted it. This is a good track to freakin’ run to. There is no stupid law joke to accompany this.

Peculiar musical choices aside, I almost caused a mistrial and then went on to say “[jalapeno beer] is a lot better than clamato, that’s for sure” while being cross examined. My smartassery probably undermined the whole trial atmosphere. My mistake, colleague of the law.

On that note, play me off keyboard cat….

Immunity from BLS, not H1N1

Because I am an SBA member (aka the student government, which is actually just the social event planning organization at BLS), I will refrain from reiterating the speculation and general missives regarding the quasi-cancellation of Immunity Day for a a good chunk of students here at this fine institution. What is Immunity Day you ask?

Once every quarter, in about the fifth or sixth week, students and professors agree on a day to make classes less stressful and support a good cause at the same time. Dubbed “Immunity Day,” the event allows students to purchase a pass that prevents them from being called on by a professor in a particular class.

Although a seemingly insignificant reward, the weight taken off the shoulders of students during class is worth the price. Jolie McCuistion, [previous] Student Bar Association President, says students walk into class on Immunity Day confidently, as if they had a “shield” from professor’s questions

Link

There is not a single, articulated answer that has been delivered down to the teeming masses as to why there is faculty discontent with the event. Like the JFK assassination, there are likely many reasons and motivations. It has been noted that the topic will be discussed during a secret faculty meeting held within the The Jaworski Cave of Skulls beneath the school, followed thereafter by a human sacrifice at the Altar of the Gummy Bear. The secret ritual meeting will be held during the winter solstice of 2009. Juuust kidddiiing. Except for the part about how it is a closed-door faculty meeting during the winter quarter.

Please note, Immunity Day has not been canceled for most classes. It appears to be in a state of flux. Anyway, on to 3-4 fragmented points:

1. I am stunned at the total lack of communication and the seeming general disconnect between students and faculty on this issue. I do not know exactly why this is. What I do know is that I was actually a little insulted as a student and SBA member when I found out unnamed/unidentified faculty member(s) were under the impression that the funds donated for charity were in part used for party planning purposes. We may be a group of lushes, but come on. I mean it’s pretty damn easy to e-mail us and just ask. Give us a little credit.

2. I understand that BLS emphasizes the vocational aspects of law; we must grow into ass-stomping, face-eating litigators who wield giant clubs of legal justice. I understand that the general educational apparatus we live under is designed to make us grizzled workaholics so that we can hit the ground running. SERIOUS LAWYER FACE! That’s why many of us wanted to come here – because it isn’t supposed to be easy. In a perverse way I think we enjoy much of the difficulty, it’s sort of like a runner’s high.

But even marathon runners take a break every once in a while. This school has few morale boosters or traditions (unless you consider miniature nervous breakdowns a tradition). Immunity Day is one of them (hell, admissions uses it in its promotional materials).  One day of reprieve isn’t going to erase 3 years of personal/spiritual/mental/financial destruction (the holy parallelogram of pain). We get it. Life and litigation are hard.

3. Quality of life is one issue I know students look at before picking what law school to attend, and sometimes I think the powers that be at BLS forget that students are more than fungible sources of tuition and future alumni donations. Our collective well-being is an issue as important as our collective legal education. Yes, I know it sounds like arbitrary, candyassed whining to those on the outside, but Immunity Day is a little oasis of reprieve towards the end of the quarter. If you want proof of how far students are willing to go in order to receive a 12 hour break I submit to you this: thousands of dollars have been raised for Waco charities from the PC class alone, who were paying upwards of $50 a pop to not get called on for one day. We have donated hundreds and hundreds of gallons of blood for immunity. I’m pretty sure many would wrap their kidneys in $20s and donate them to Hillcrest  if it meant weeklong immunity.

I’m sure a reasonable agreement will be hashed out in the coming months. Or not, it is a private school after all and students have no bargaining power or leverage. I know one thing BLS is good at is teaching you to shut up and get back in line.

That was sort of an uncharacteristically bitter comment for this blog, wasn’t it?

For other BLS blogs of note, and their take on the issue, please see my colleagues of the law over at The Davis Firm, Magnificent Vista, and Female Parts

Extended Stay

I actually started law school back in the fall of 2007 at St. Mary’s before Baylor accidentally let me in. I wanted to hedge my bets while Baylor took their time in admitting me, so I held off on renting an apartment in San Antonio and I lived in an extended stay motel near the medical center for several weeks.

But I didn’t live in one of those extended stay motels where weary businessmen with important business cards and important phone calls stay. No sir or ma’am, I stayed in the only extended stay anywhere near the St. Mary’s campus with vacancies. It was a place where the recently-foreclosed on, the meth-addled, the down-on-their luck stayed. It’s a weird memory that I keep going back to.

My room had one crusted stovetop burner that didn’t work. The paisley covered blanket was made of that kind of nylon that seems like it was woven right on-site at the oil refinery. The dimmed yellow of the fluorescent ceiling lights and the heavy curtains gave you no option but to forget that it was daytime outside. It was basically the cigarette hole and water stain suite. My girlfriend at the time and I were having severe issues. It was all a recipe for that special, grade A, thick and juicy blend of gloom.

A crappy extended stay motel is nothing without its residents. There was the biker guy who lived next door who brought home a string of sullen prostitutes – and made sure everyone who shared a wall with him knew about it. There was the front desk guy named Elk or Bull or something related to a large four-legged creature. There was the shady dude who looked like he just came back from executing a hit each night.
But there were these two ladies there who I remember the most. I’ll call them Laverne and Claudia, because I don’t remember their names (actually I think one of them was named Claudia).

Anyway, these were the kinds of ladies you see at the Interstate 35 Denny’s at four in the morning. You meet them and it’s a sensory overload – the sickly sweet smell of K-Mart perfume, Virginia Slims and hairspray that sort of melts off that weathered frame, all of it jammed into a tube top and white-washed jeans. You wonder where they’ve just been and you wonder what the hell they’re still doing up at four a.m., but you stop wondering because there are few positive possibilities present in that stream of speculation. So you just stop and eat your damn steak because you’re still sort of inebriated.

After my first day of classes, I went outside and Laverne came out to talk to me. Her voice sounded like it had been drenched in brine. She asked for a cigarette and I gladly obliged. Complete the brining process why not? She called me kiddo a lot and asked what my deal was, why I was living at the Motel 6 with two Cocker Spaniels and a ton of books in tow and on and on. I explained my situation.

L: A lawyer eh!
WK: Not even ma’am. First day at law school.
L: Hoo boy! Lemme tell you. I had a lazysonofabitch divorce lawyer years ago. The one who didn’t do nothin’ when my kids were taken away from me by their dad.
WK: Oh?
L: You wouldn’t be like that would you?
WK: Like your ex-husband or your divorce attorney?
L: Either one I guess.
WK: I don’t think I would be. What happened?
L: I got messed up. That was a long time ago. But they had no right.
WK: How long ago?
L: 15 years ago? 16?
WK: Where are your kids now?
L: Haven’t seen them since. Dunno where they are. Here’s a picture of them when they were little.

I look at the picture she produced from her purse. It was Sears Family Portrait-style from the early 90s. A young blonde woman and a guy with a mullet border two toddlers. They looked happy. The kids are probably about my age by now.

L: You want some dinner? Claudia is making chicken and black eyed peas inside. Come on inside.

Man. This just got really awkward. Who is Claudia? (Laverne lied to me by the way, she had a full pack in her purse). I have nothing better to do, so what the hell, right?

I go inside and Claudia is cooking a pot of black-eyed peas on the single, encrusted stovetop burner. Claudia isn’t very talkative. She stares me down and gives me a mountain of food on a Styrofoam plate. Laverne is sitting next to her suitcase at the foot of the bed. She glances at the picture before tucking it away and then looked at a calendar tacked into the wall. A Georgia O’Keefe painting is for August.

L: We got a lawyer here Claudia!
WK: No, really, I literally just started law school. I’m not a lawyer.
C: Oh a laaaaaaaaaawyer. You won’t become one of those shitty lawyers like I’ve dealt with will you?
WK: I don’t … think so? No. Why would I do that?
C: You know. Each one I ever dealt with thinks they’re better than me. But they don’t know.
L: He’ll be one of the good ones.
WK: I mean, I’ll do my best.
C: Just do right by others and you’ll do good. I can tell you’ll do good. Can you spare another cigarette?
WK: Yes ma’am. Thanks for the food.

Laverne turned on HBO. Claudia turned back to stirring the pot of black-eyed peas. I’m standing there with a plate of soul food. I thank them for the food and go back to my room to figure out what the hell a tort or eggshell plaintiff is.

A few months later I returned home from 1L orientation at Baylor. I came home with a head full of lofty goals and neat aspirations. In my 1L packet of knowledge and truth, there was a green card Dean BT distributed. Written on it was a lot of stuff about ethics and being a good upstanding young attorney and law student and it had my signature on it. I’m pretty sure I lost that green piece of paper. I know for damn sure I forgot what it said.

But I do vividly remember those ladies at the Motel 6 Extended Stay in San Antonio. I have no idea what their stories were really all about, what facts and personal failings were omitted. I have no idea how good or bad their attorneys were. Honestly, none of those particulars really matter. Their command was simple: Don’t be a jerk. Be good. Eat well.

That little vignette isn’t something I look back on because I want to do public interest work or because I have some special altruistic urge to help the poor and wretched. I’d be just as happy doing real estate transactions or taxes if it’s a more expedient path to freedom from servitude to SallieMae.

I guess it sticks out in my memory because its inherent relevancy can seem so foreign now.

(WK’s stating-the-obvious-explanatory-note-o-rama: I write a lot about these kinds of experiences because let’s be honest, law school is just a bubble. I catch myself wondering what life was once like before I moved to Waco, before I used to spend hours sitting my butt reading cases or planning a career or judging someone’s moot court argument. I was once prone to having bizarre experiences and meeting random people. I miss that. It made life interesting and worthwhile. I’m trying not to forget it).

Irony is embedded into my ankle

This summer I had the utmost luck to work at a law office. I sat for 8 hours a day. Lots of sitting makes me immensely jittery and anxious – so I took up x-treme running after work. First it was a chore. Then it became an addiction. Like a crazy heroin addiction. Me, WK, the Whopper eating, smoking, drinking, exercise-eschewing heathen, running. I have always relied on my perpetual-metabolism machine (TM) to keep me at a trim 160, but I know one day it will cease to function, so I decided vigorous exercise was a good preventive idea. Now I cling to it like so many natural opiates cascading through my neurons and bloodstream after a Pantera fueled sprint.

So in any case, I’ve been feeling real healthy and all that jazz (although I’m still sleepy). How awesome, an addiction that actually IMPROVES your health? Life is too good!

Until you screw up your ankle. My ankle has been in severe agony for two weeks now, and I walk around like Quasimodo, or a pirate on a peg leg or something. With every step I take, I am reminded that irony is a bastard and that pronated strides cause severe injury.

Because of my pronounced limp, a friend pressured me into seeing a doctor. I am one of the millions of uninsured (my feelings on healthcare for a later post). I am uninsured because I am cash poor (but rich in youthful zest!), so I’m chancing it until I gain full-time employment (hopefully as a lawyer and not as a bartender with a JD). Back to the main topic; I caved and went to a Qwik-E-Klinic. You know what? I received excellent, affordable care. They even sent me home with a free CD of my x-rays! Check out my leg!

The diagnosis – achilles tendonitis – exactly what WebMD told me. My bones are like the unbreakable iron rods of justice, but my tendons are the weak sinew of sadness or something. Running – I miss it because it hurts so good.